The People's Court / YMMV

Awesome Music: Alan Tew's "The Big One", a funky piece of library music that predates the show. The revival replaced it with very similar music for the Opening Narration (starting in Judge Milian's first full season) and the credits, but it was retained for the litigant introductions.
First Installment Wins: The Wapner era is considered the best version of the show.
Never Live It Down: In one episode, Judge Milian accidentally tripped and fell on the stairs while walking down from the bench to approach the litigants. She wasn't injured, but it was a tense moment considering that she's over 55 years old. In several subsequent episodes, Douglas stays close-by to assist Milian on the stairs, much to her playful annoyance.
Replacement Scrappy:
- Many people considered Curt Chaplin (the court reporter from 1997-2016) this, saying his snarkier and more arrogant attitude to the litigants was too much of a departure from original reporter Doug Llewelyn. The latter returning in 2016 to replace Chaplin was met with much praise.
- There are some people who will dislike Koch, Sheindlin, and/or Milian, if only because they aren't Judge Wapner.
The Scrappy: Some people consider host Harvey Levin this, again for his snarky attitude. It doesn't help that his company, TMZ, is generally criticized for various reasons.
Tear Jerker:
- The case aired February 28, 2018, may be one of the saddest and most tragic cases in the series' history. Two parents whose adult son had recently died of a drug overdose were in court over a dispute regarding the deceased's ashes - the young man's father claimed that the defendant had not given him half of the ashes as promised. Both parents openly blamed each other for their son's death, the father claiming that the young man had turned to drugs because the mother had made the young man's life miserable, and the mother, who sobbed through her entire testimony, alleging that it was the father who had gotten her son into drugs and even had him sell drugs for him at school. Judge Milian, who visibly had tears in her own eyes while delivering her verdict, tried to deliver words of encouragement, particularly to the defendant, before dismissing the case because the plaintiff's proper legal recourse was to take the case to probate court, not small-claims court, as the litigants' son had died without a will. The drama continued while the parties were being interviewed by Doug after the verdict, as the plaintiff exposed himself as a world-class Jerkass by taking that moment to mention the defendant's past as a prostitute runaway. Doug himself was appalled at this and scolded the plaintiff for saying that, and apologized to the still-tearful defendant afterward.
- Another case involved a grandmother who had decided to cut her daughter and her grandchildren out of her life simply because her daughter refused to have the children baptized. The grandmother, a devout Catholic, believed this meant the grandchildren would not go to heaven. After a heated argument, the daughter tried to reach out to her mother to repair the relationship, but the grandmother still refused to forgive her and had not spoken to her or her grandchildren since. Judge Milian became emotional as she tried to talk some sense into the grandmother. Despite the judge's pleas, the grandmother still refused to reconcile with her daughter after the verdict.
  Judge Milian: You know what, if my mother and I were to have a fight - those days are over, we're too old for that [light audience laughter] - but if we did, I couldn't STAND IT! Because in the end, YOU PICK THE PERSON OVER BEING RIGHT, because it should matter to you! But you know what reality she has to live with forever? That she didn't! She didn't matter enough to you. [tearing up] Do you know how sad that is? That your own flesh and blood didn't matter enough to you? And not just her, her children didn't matter to you. No one mattered to you enough for you to put loving them and missing them over being right! ... Enough already. ENOUGH ALREADY. Because trust me, there is no God that I can envision that would be smiling upon your behavior.
- The case that aired November 15, 2019 is another contender for the most heartbreaking case in the series' history. The plaintiffs' fourteen-year-old daughter was unhappy over being punished for bad behavior, so she ran away to the defendants' house, claiming she was being abused. The defendants, her boyfriend's parents, hid her for several days without reporting it to the police, and a massive search party was already being organized. After Judge Milian examined paper copies of text messages exchanged between the plaintiffs' daughter and the defendants' son, including those where the girl was considering killing her parents, she gave a stern lecture to the litigants. To make matters worse, one of the defendants (the boy's father), a youth counselor, laughed while testifying for his counterclaim for harassment, so Judge Milian tossed him right out of the courtroom.
  Judge Milian: [to the defendants] You're out of your mind. You're out of your mind, both of you. You think you have the facts to make decisions that are so weighty and that will have such effect on people's lives, including your own son, and you don't...have...the facts! [drops a stack of papers containing the text messages onto her desk, then turns to the plaintiffs] You guys need to RUN, NOT WALK, to a civil courthouse to file a complaint for their interference in your parental rights. You need to talk to your lawyer about it and you need to do it to-day so that it can get in front of a judge, who will then order them not to have anything to do with your daughter. Quite frankly, I don't know how you can continue to work on this with two adults who have the HUBRIS to think they know better and to continue to go against what you want as parents, and what everyone is working towards in unification here. All of the professionals, all of the cops, all of the probation officers, all of – all of the therapists. Everyone's working towards a goal that they are stopping you from achieving. So, stop being a victim! Go to court and file a lawsuit to get the order that you want!

YMMV / The People's Court

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